That’s true for me as well, which I find interesting. Five labels should work equally well as five stars, but for some reason my brain doesn’t process them the same way.
To me, “meh” translates to an anemic “It’s OK, I guess”; i.e. can’t say I liked it but can’t say I disliked it either. Right in the middle, and I have a bunch of movies in that tier. But somehow three stars seems more positive.
None of this really matters. With as long as I’ve had roommates using my accounts on the living room TV, “my” viewing history on every streaming service has already ruined all recommendation engines despite whatever ratings I actively apply. I know Netflix has profiles I could set up for different users, but that’s more overhead to watching TV than I would put up with or expect my roommates to deal with.
I’m assuming this is a problem everyone with roommates or families deals with, and I really wish there was a way to fix it, but I can’t think of any practical solution.
Nah, well sort of but not really. My wife and I have separate Netflix profiles, and my kids a third. I don’t have to watch her garbage, and she doesn’t get a bunch of reccomendations for Hong Kong style films and old sci fi TV shows, as well as animated series (Ip Man, Star Trek TNG, and Clone Wars responsible). The only crossover is with the Marvel series shows.
Damn, I misread that and thought you were saying there was an Ip Man animated series.
Do you all use separate TVs, or are you all just vigilant about switching profiles? Maybe I’m overestimating the hassle of the profiles.
I guess I could just make a “Living Room” profile and leave that logged in, using my profile on my personal devices and only switching to my own profile on the TV if I really feel like it for some reason. Maybe this could work after all…
Mostly? I don’t really watch much. Like maybe an hour a week, two at the most. Most of that on my Surface Pro. But my wife uses the TV, and my son does too sometimes. So we switch profiles fairly regularly (as in on a Saturday we may switch back and forth 3-4 times). It’s no big deal, and a far sight better than trying to pick out childrens programming from our lists and visa versa. Put it on kids and Octonauts, Thomas, and Magic School Bus come up instantly. No shorting the algorithm by placing Princess Sophia next to Jessica Jones.
Also my son has a LeapFrog tablet he uses with lots of educational games and videos. But it also supports a (time limited) Netflix app. So he can leave that logged on to kids and we don’t have to worry about him accidentally putting on something wildly inappropriate.
Doesn’t it prompt you to choose a profile every time you open an app? It always asks if I want child mode and I only have the one profile.
Depends the platform. Our Panasonic TV? Yes it does. My Surface (using the app version) does not, nor does my sons tablet. So switching on the TV is simple by virtue of having to choose a profile each time anyhow.
Not usually on the Apple TV.
Apologies for derailing the thread, but now I’m mad that Hulu apparently hasn’t rolled their user profiles out to the Apple TV version of their app (apparently it’s on the old 3rd gen Apple TVs but not the current ones) and YouTube has no way to handle this at all. I can’t win, the system sucks: ★★☆☆☆
I really really want to see this movie. It would absolutely be better than that other movie.
Hahahaha, that’s what I get for typing a long post on my phone while trying to corral my 3 year old to go to bed :P
The new Netflix ratings are pretty useless. I checked the stars as I would be interested in a movie that was rated three stars or more. Now all I see is that Netflix, based on what I have watched, thinks there is a 95% chance I might like it. I don’t care.
Agreed! At least with the old ratings I could weed out stinkers if they had many 1-star ratings. Now, the ratings are completely useless. The “weeding out the stinkers using Netflix ratings” option is now gone. Browsing Netflix titles is now useless. I can now only find movies/shows I might be interested in by going to other movie/show ratings sites, perhaps finding items I’m interested in, and then going to Netflix to see if they are available there.
If a movie at Netflix looks interesting, I head over to IMDB to get a rating. At least Hoopla is using the 5 star rating system, though I usually double check at IMDB since Hoopla has quite a few movies of poor quality, as well as some good ones.
To be honest, my reply was mostly intended to be flippant. I haven’t read enough about the new system (or seen it in action too much with my current work schedule) to know if it’s going to be a gain\loss. Here’s my dilemma - I believe the last system (the stars) either represented what others who watched things similar to me rated it, or what it believed my rating would be based on viewers similar to me. In either case, the net effect was the same; I used the stars as a way to prioritize what to view when lazy browsing Netflix (a fairly regular occurrence when it’s late on Saturday and we want to make a frozen pizza and watch something without investing in it).
Without those stars, do I have to move to external sources to prioritize what to watch? I’m not the sort to put on a movie for a half hour and make my decision; I want to know ahead of time whether I want to watch it.
Also, as regards meh - it’s tough for me, because we watch a fair amount of stuff for reasons other than pure entertainment. There’s a fair bit of horror we watch for reference (for our own Halloween display, or for usage at the haunted house my wife works at), and we rated those for viewers who may actually want to watch a horror movie. Stuff like Frankenstein’s Army - an AWESOME piece of viewing for Nazi steampunk monster reference, but a “meh” film overall.
People saying ballpunch/meh/orgasm feels more negative than 3 stars out of five-- well, of course it does. The former is 1.5/3 or a 50% rating, versus 3/5 at 60%. Meh is truly neutral, 3/5 is slightly positive.
You could also see it as 2/3 versus 3/5 but that way lies madness.
Haha you guys watch movies.
Yup. Give me two weeks and I may even finish one!